Riot Fest is built different. For starter’s Douglas Park offers an expansive atmosphere second only to Lollapalooza, but with fewer fountains and pavement and more lawn for you to kick back on. Punks of all persuasions traverse the ground in what feels like a nostalgic Ren Fest of rock ’n roll. 

Local staples like The Cobra Lounge and Bar Tola have stands, and there’s more eye candy than you’ll know what to do with, from Jesus playing hacky sack, to burlesque dancers at this year’s inaugural Strip-O-Rama, to a small chapel with an ordained minister where dozens of couples tied the knot. It’s pure, beautiful chaos.

Yet it’s the music that keeps people coming back year after year, and 2024’s lineup was no exception. Big names like Fall Out Boy, Beck, Slayer, and Sublime, closed out the nights. These are our top acts from a wild weekend. 

At Riot Fest, Hot Mulligan wants to hear you scream 

At its best, emo music offers a sense of raw catharsis. It’s meant to be sung or screamed as loud as possible until maybe – just maybe – that weight on your back gets a little bit lighter. Or maybe that’s just all the air leaving your body? 

Regardless, Hot Mulligan provides exactly that. Nathan ‘Tades’ Sanville skulked onto the stage wearing the classic emo get up: a black T and even blacker jeans. With indistinguishably long dark hair and beard and a barrel chested rasp of a voice he quietly commands the spotlight. 

Their music is anything but quiet. It’s 45 minutes of pedal to the floor pop-punk emo. It’s relentlessly peppy, yet the lyrics that punch through are undeniably doleful. “Can’t stand the fact I know where you are / Ten years, I still try to spot your car” Sanville screams out over a grainy guitar hook. It’s their lead single “Shhh Golf is On” off their latest album “Why Would I Watch”. 

“Do you like yelling? He asks the crowd after the song. They roared back in the affirmative. “Prove it” he taunted them. For the rest of the set, the audience more than acquitted itself. 

A well polished Spoon

There’s a specific kind of energy that comes with an anti-establishment themed music festival. The rage against the machine aesthetic can be both exciting and alternately cloying when you’re selling self titled seltzer waters (re: Riot Pop!) 

So to see alt rock darling’s Spoon take the stage felt surprising. They’re calm. There’s very little rage here. In fact this 5 piece sounds more like pop in comparison to Riot Fest’s main fair. It’s catchy, with groovy piano hooks and a steady beat that burrows gently inside you like a second heart. 

They don’t pander to their audience; it’s not that type of show. You can get into it. You can zone out. You can do both. They’re not trying to seduce you. 

Still what’s remarkable about Spoon is that out of every band I heard that weekend, they had the best mix. I could hear the nuance of every instrument interweaving with one other. It wasn’t a strain to distinguish the lyrics.

Their music plays with enough tight turns, clever drop outs, and rhythmic mix ups to keep their audiences ear. And even if Spoon is no longer reinventing the wheel in regards to genre or sound, its less performative take on existential angst was as welcome as the clouds that hovered in front of the blistering sun for their set. It was a moment of cool in a weekend of heat.

St. Vincent is just the same but brand new

Dressed like a young Morticia Adams, a spidery St Vincent (real name Annie Clark) looked statuesque on the Metro Cabaret Stage. Framed by three large black and silver arches, St Vincent stoically murmured the second track “Reckless” from her latest album “All Born Screaming.” 

“I watched you all night til the dawn had come”  she whispered, painting a converse view of the sun setting before her over a crowd of thousands. The lyrics are evocatively elusive but they draw the audience in effortlessly, stitching them into her web, as a droning bell tolls out. It’s intoxicating in its monotony. 

“A stranger comes in my path / And I’ll eat you up. / I’ll tear you limb from limb or I’ll fall in love.” St Vincent warns. Then the beat drops, carving out a hole in your chest like a lighting bolt striking wet ground. The synth blares with an almost cosmic dissonance. It’s at once romantic and unsettling, slipping into your blood like a drug that might push you over the edge at any moment. 

After her Grammy award winning yet divisive sixth album, Daddy’s Home, her latest effort feels both like a reinvention and a return to form. There’s an esoteric quality to her production, an element of sonic chiaroscuro, that heightens the album’s emotionality in a way that feels new for the forty one year old prodigy.

Songs like “Flea” and “Broken Man” (the albums first two singles) are thundering classic rock collages to rile you up. Meanwhile the swirling “Big Time Nothing” presents a guttural anti-mantra that reads like an AI generated self-help book. The verses instruct the audience with do’s and don’ts of acceptable behaviour as a bass synth loop rumbles like a car down a video game race track.  “I look inside and,” she chants and her bandmates answer her with a choral “Nothing”. 

All Born Screaming is surprisingly personal for the often opaque St Vincent. Yet interwoven with her entire oeuvre, it still allows for all of Annie Clark’s avatars to come out to play. From the benzo beauty queen of Daddy’s Home grabbing her crotch like an absentminded child to All Born Screaming’s self-exorcising Broken Man throwing drum stands and writhing on the ground to the sound of his own mind bending guitar licks. 

A Tarantino faced cameraman dressed in a trench coat and a permanent frown gets in on the action, broadcasting it all from the stage. St Vincent all but chews on the camera, devouring the audience’s attention in an ouroboric loop. 

Cursive confounds 

“Should we start early?” The sound engineer asked over his headset. The rain had just let up on Sunday afternoon, and a sea of ponchos looked to the sky expectantly to see if it would hold. An enthusiastic fan with a kid on his shoulder turned back to the sound booth. “Yes please!” he grinned. 

Dressed in a T-shirt with a lederhosen print, Cursive lead singer Tim Kasher’s voice strains out above the crowd. It’s a voice that feels like it’s always about to crack open. “I’ll try to make this perfectly clear,” he starts out “I’m so transparent I disappear.” 

Cursive is one of the bands credited with bringing the Midwest Emo scene onto the map. Over twenty years after its emergence, you can still hear the genre’s iconic DNA in Cursive’s music. 

Unapologetic time signature changes captivate and confuse the ear.  Horns punctuate sweeping piano arpeggios like a celestial marching band sounding its dying call. Elements of math rock are overlaid with the lyricism of angst and self-loathing. “I’d like to sock my piety in the eye” Kasher belts out.

Yet beyond these basic elements, Cursive does something masterful with its arrangements – cellist Megan Siebe brings beauty to the bloodshed, as Patrick Newbery underlays a propulsive melodic synth score. The polyrhythmic precision between the drums and keys creates a time signature that confounds the heartbeat with an almost existential arrhythmia. 

I couldn’t tell if I wanted to dance or take a Xanax. And while the audience might have been confused as to whether they wanted to mosh or just stoically take it all in, Cursive had their full attention.

 Waxahatchee gives us the night sways  

 After fifteen minutes of listening to Pavement warbling, I decided it might be time to call it a night. Strolling across the grounds, guided by the light of a giant Ferris Wheel, my ears picked up a sound that brought me back to the Texas State Fair. I took a hard left and wandered over to the Radical Stage following the waves of a crystalline voice that swept out into the dark like the sound of a river at night. 

Country music is divisive these days. Everyone seems to have a strong opinion about what it is or isn’t. Still listening to Waxahatchee I couldn’t help but feel transported to my Texas childhood. 

For me, country has a way of careening into affection unlike any other genre – feelings of love, loss, and longing find fluency in the steel guitar, tight harmonies, and rhythmic steadiness. Modern iterations of the genre often feel too commercial and pop oriented for my taste. So I was delighted to hear Waxahatchee (the solo project of Kathryn Crutchfield) tap Into something waxingly personal. 

A banjo picks throughout the single “Right Back to It” as Crutchfield’s sonorous voice explores the ins and outs of a long-held and healthy relationship. “Your love written like a blank check / Wear it around your neck / I was at a loss” she keens. Under the light of the Ferris wheel and the few stars not inked out by the city’s light pollution, it was impossible not to start swaying. All across the field you could see couples and friends linking up, careening into the innate affection of the genre and Waxahatchee’s earnest and heartfelt sound. 

The whole band takes turns dueting with Crutchfield, effortlessly filling the moonlight grounds with lush harmonies. The rhythm keeps a steadiness that holds you in its sway. It was the perfect night cap to a long day.  

We hope you left your poncho on for GWAR

I’d never seen or heard of GWAR before. I may never see them again. I can’t say I’ll seek them out. And yet, I write with confidence that I will never forget their performance on Sunday afternoon. GWAR is a heavy metal band. They play what you’d expect from heavy metal music: loud, distorted guitar and relentless vocal charge, all delivered with an oppressively macho flair. 

GWAR delivers all of this and more. So, so much more. 

Dressed head to toe in costume armour, they look like the cast of Thor Ragnorak woke up in a Sam Raimi movie. One of them stands on giant horse hooves like a satyr. The frontman wears a sporran made of penises and gash. They’re demonic, otherworldly barbarians here to thrash their guitars, but mostly to thrash each other. 

And to perform comedy sketches with a sprinkling of social commentary! Between every song there was a grotesque skit poking fun at current events. A pregnant Taylor Swift confronts the band member who knocked her up. P. Diddy is ridiculed for his taste in lube. Benjamin Netanyahu dances to a rock’n’roll Hora. 

Each cameo served as an elaborate set up to do the same thing. The musicians would take turns fighting the new challenger until they began hacking parts of them clean off. Hands. Heads. Bowels. Genitals. It all gets chopped off and blood (or other imaginative fluids) spray out onto the audience. 

It’s willfully offensive. A pregnant Swift is assaulted as they sing their song “Slap U Around”. A caricatured Radio DJ calls the audience faggots and losers before he’s decapitated, spraying gallons of blood out onto the audience. (Note to GWAR: it’s not the 90s anymore. No need to call me a fag, I ride the CTA.)

The satire paradox is on full display. I can’t say if the social commentary is being used as a weapon to provoke thought, or just shield them from criticism. Still there are moments when something meaningful shines through. As Netanyahu holds a baby doll over his head, the band begins their thrasher “Hail, Genocide!” 

“They show you no mercy / they just show you a line” they scream. Over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza. 70% are estimated to be women and children. “Call it what you will but I call it genocide.”

Magnolia Park goes hard and goofy 

A school bell rings and it’s time for a lesson in pop punk. Bounding onto the stage with red dreads, tight blue jeans, and neon kicks, Joshua Roberts of Magnolia Park grinned down on a wetter than usual audience. Sunday morning gave us a reprieve from the near ninety degree heat with a steady morning shower. Undeterred, Roberts welcomed his audience with the confidence of a millennial pop-punk Messiah. 

“Don’t be a little bitch!” he dared them. “Let me see you jump!”

Riot Fest goes hard. It can be overwhelming to have so many hype men trying to get you to match their freak. Still, some bands talk the talk, and others walk it. The enthusiasm and energetic performance of Magnolia Park did the latter and had the audience unabashedly moshing in the rain.

“Everyone get into the pit!” the bassist roared into the mic. “Throw your friend into the pit! Throw your dog into the pit! Throw your grandmother into the pit!” he joked. 

The energy was perfectly summed up by their first live performance of “I 2 I”, a rock cover off Disney’s new compilation album “A Whole New Sound”. Max of Goof Troop fame (iykyk), was projected onto the screens, bringing back a rush of nostalgia as the band resurrected the song with blaring bravado. It was undeniably goofy, and undeniably fun. 

“Raise your hands if you’ve never crowd surfed before.” Dozens of eager hands shot up. “All right then. Get up here!” Wet and laughing as Magnolia Park played yet another banger, the uninitiated got lifted.

* * *

With over 90 bands over three days, there are just too many incredible moments to  write about in one small article. We loved Riot Fest, and can’t wait to be raging with you again next year. These are our favourites; what did we miss? 

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Having released her latest album over two months ago, it was clear from the Toronto crowd, a majority congregated on the main floor, that everyone was well acquainted beyond the singles. However, Waxahatchee played nothing released before 2020, which surely disappointed diehards who had been following Crutchfield’s beginnings during her formative, Cerulean Salt era.

Nevertheless, albums such as 2020’s Saint Cloud got plenty of love during the evening, often reinforced by Crutchfield’s bond to the South during songs like “Can’t Do Much” where her voice seemed more pronounced. Elsewhere, tracks like “Lilac” felt like an anthemic highlight of the night that found her band settling in after launching their tour mere days beforehand in Kansas City.

Using her unique knack for phrasing and lyrics to re-invent alt-country for new listeners, the Alabama native brought the evening’s tempo up a notch with “Right Back To It,” which featured guitarist Clay Frankel faithfully performing the harmony MJ Lenderman put on record. “When I dreamed of someday being a singer, this is what I was going to see,” Crutchfield told Toronto attendees after performing the album’s lead single inside Massey Hall’s impressive gilded interior.

Crutchfield isn’t a torch singer, but her drawl is incredibly honest. The ever-so-subtle gravel she applies in some of her songs makes it clear she’s lived through them. Luckily, this iteration of Waxahatchee feels undeniably in tune and organic. It’s something of a welcome ray of light in what’s surely been a road to recovery after coming to grips with her detailed alcohol addiction and subsequent tour burnout of the past.

Either way, the overall effect made the Waxahatchee songs seem more intimate, impactful, with a hint of laid-back energy. By definition, that’s what Americana music is and should be.

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Katie Crutchfields’s music project Waxahatchee is currently touring behind their 4^th LP, Out in The Strom, the most produced, polished release she’s done so far. Noteworthy producer John Agnello (Kurt Vile, SonicYouth and Dinosaur Jr) helped with creating this piece. Although many are saying this is a guitar heavy album I was mostly taken by the vocals. For quite a few of the ballads Crutchfield is sans-guitar supported by either her twin sister Allison on the keys or lead guitarist Katie Harkin on the strings (also touring guitarist for Sleater Kinney).

The set started with “Recite Remorse,” smoke filled the stage and all eyes were on Crutchfield. While the majority of her albums have been about relationships and loss, Out in The Storm, is different in the sense that it’s about what happens in the aftermath – who we become or evolve into after the relationship ends. Next up was “Silver” which for all intensive purposes is the title track of the album thanks to the lyrics like ‘If I turn to stone /The whole world keeps turnin’/I went out in the storm/And I’m never returnin’.

Crutchfield’s band was dressed in suits accept her and her sister who wore an amalgamation of a sexy formfitting top under and blazer blazer, while Crutchfield herself was in a stylish, minimalist dress that buttoned up to the throat. The band took some time to tune guitars and make jokes about not drinking after the second track (the twins of Waxahatchee love a good cocktail, it’s common knowledge and often topics of their songs) before playing “Poison” from Ivy Tripp. At this point I realized there were three guitars playing at once transmitting immense noise and power. The band continued to go through a combination of Ivy Tripp, Cerulean Salt, and Out in the Storm. During tracks from Cerulean Salt or guitar heavy tracks such as “Brass” Crutchfield whipped her hair around like a banshee. Waxahatchee closed out the set with “Under a Rock,” definitely one of the most popular tracks in the catalog.

Seeing Crutchfield live at this point in her career is like watching someone graduate high school. They’ve worked really hard, they have a ton of potential, and you’re just stoked to see what they will do with it. Her songwriting, stage presence, and musicianship has only improved and being backed by a label like Merge will only give her more opportunities to explore herself and her sound. I’m extremely excited to see where this progression takes her.

Waxahatchee is currently on their North American Tour until August 19^th, after that you’ll have to head overseas to catch them.

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We had to leave Mourn early to catch the wonderful strumming of Katie Crutchfield. Katie performs under the name Waxahatchee and she tours with her sister Allison whose band is called Screamin. Katie looked cute as button on Sunday in a dress very similar to the one worn by Suzy Bishop in Moonrise Kingdom. She also plays a Reverend, which is so perfect for her. It’s a boutique brand sold at pretty affordable prices. Waxahatchee is similar in the way that Katie is crazy talented but you can catch her show for about $20.

Next Courtney Barnett graced us in all her raw, furious glory. I just want to take a minute to bring to attention all of the kick ass ladies that performed this past weekend. It’s a good time to be a woman in the music scene, keep keeping on ladies. Barnett’s set was easily one of the most packed of the festivals. Her energy on stage was palpable and I love that she took the time to acknowledge the members of her band. Barnett played a telecaster, which I noticed seemed to be the choice of many musicians at the festival. Perhaps 2015 is the year of the telecaster?

Run The Jewels should have closed out the festival but their lack of Chicago heritage kept them from that. The minute they come onto the stage the whole crowd bursts into some sort of hedonistic frenzy. Everyone immediately lit up, slurped something down or chucked debris into the air. RTJ let us know they wouldn’t do much talking because they had some surprises coming our way. I knew right away once of those surprises would be Zach de la Rocha, which it was!! They also had Boots and Gangsta Boo join them onstage. RTJ ran a good line between having fun on stage and bringing to light some of the issues of our society. They dedicated one of their songs to all the young African American men who have been killed by brutal police force.

Chance The Rapper closed out the weekend and that’s all I really have to say about him. He’s a talented young man but I feel like it was impossible to follow RTJ.

Pitchfork’s 10th year was celebrated in full Chicago style; crazy weather, buckets of booze and great music. They were able to encapsulate so much of who they are with this lineup. They reminded us of our beginnings with bands like Wilco and Sleater Kinney. They proved that talent doesn’t know the boundaries of age with Mourn. They showed that they believe that women just as much as men have an incredibly powerful voice in the music world. Pitchfork is definitely proud to be a Chicago-based company but to them it really doesn’t matter where you’re from. Your race, gender, age or background doesn’t dictate what kind of music you make, your internal substance does.

More images from the festival can be found here.

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